demimonde note taking

by Patrick Johnston

I seem to spend half my time thinking thoughts on the back of motor scooters. Juddering past ancient Wats and Temples and Mosques and Cathedrals. And open front stores where wiry, tanned mechanics fix bikes. And wet markets and dry markets and tat markets and food markets and night markets. And squatting on shopfront steps, trying to capture elusive words before they disappear. And following hunches down narrow darkened alleys in search of ghost words and Djinn words and thylacine words. I stop in dangerous places to capture the danger words that assault my mind.

The rest of the time I spend in my hotel, jerking off and making aeroplane noises.

Photo of Patrick Johnston

BIO: Patrick Johnston is an Anglo-Australian writer and former professor of psychology and neuroscience. His work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Litro Magazine USA, among others, and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is the author of the novel The Gaps Between the Stories. He lives nomadically and writes at dr-patrick-johnston.com.